Cavalry

by Thorby Rudbek

  Wintkarn realigned his weapon on the slithering bodies as they came into view, still trying to make his trigger finger move, but two, almost simultaneous hits bored into him, the one severing the trigger hand almost entirely from the double-elbowed arm, and the other penetrating a cat-like eye and the brain behind it.

  Richard turned as he got back up and helped Commander Steele to his feet, worried now by the wheezing coming from the wild-looking man. The two resumed their run, pulling away from Karen after she had briefly narrowed the distance between them again. Fletcher led the naval officer unerringly to the Drive controls and found the complex self-destruct sequence, assembled with an impressive array of Narlav Cralls and temporary wiring. The appearance was such that he could only think of it as an ‘unholy mess’.

  “What is it?” Kevin gasped. “How do you stop it?”

  Richard looked at the circuit intently, then simply grabbed the wiring and pulled. The circuit came free and the alarms faded away.

  “How did you know?” Steele asked, amazed.

  “He didn’t have time to do anything self-protective,” Richard stated boldly, his rather shaken self-confidence restored by the result of his rash actions. “At least, that’s what I deduced.”

  The truth was that neither Crillak nor Wintkarn – nor any of the invading force, with their mighty warriors and massive Warrnam, for that matter – could conceive of being defeated by simpering, sneaking Shaatak.

  And without Kevin’s surprise intervention – the ultimate, sneaking Steele Shaatak – they would have been right and they would indeed have won.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Moon Base Tsiolkovsky

  “Nice move!” Kirrina congratulated Richard as she joined her husband and the very dishevelled Kevin at the Drive controls. “I’m so glad you were right!”

  Richard grinned, then pulled her close and kissed her, the tension of the hours of battle dissolving as they embraced. He felt the combined effects of energy rushing out of him and information flowing into him as the physical contact enabled both this levelling and redistribution of his energy to her and also the enhanced inter-communication which underwrote their intense relationship, which was of course another characteristic of the physical connection. As they melted together, he came to the realisation that she had saved both him and Commander Steele from injury or death by slowing down the Narlav’s battle reflexes.

  That training with your uncle – remind me to thank him!

  My pleasure! And I’d like for you to be able to do that…

  Kevin watched, unaware of either fact. He found himself smiling as he contemplated the most unlikely of all scenarios – both his captors were dead, yet he was still alive and he was witnessing, accepting and vicariously enjoying the passions of the two that he had previously thought were enemies to all he valued. They had saved the day! Their fleet of wondrous ships had defeated the massed might of the Narlavs!

  “This is PC Sixteen. Hi… are you okay?” The high-pitched voice of Petula Wing burst forth from the suit-mounted speakers of Richard and Kirrina, giving an almost quadraphonic effect that startled Kevin.

  “Yes, we’re okay, Pidge. I, ah – sorry I left you hanging! You don’t need to worry about any other Warrnam, we know now that this is the last one that came to our system,” Richard responded, moving his head back a little from Kirrina, but still holding her close. “How is Tracy?”

  “I’m fine,” Tracy interjected. “We’re back in our ship now, just hovering overhead, next to PC Sixteen.” The voice of the Captain of Patrol Craft Eight sounded tired, somehow, despite the ultra-optimising effects of her very recent Medic Restoration. “I think I must be one of the luckiest people around; I’ve survived two near-death situations, and, even better, I don’t recall either of them. But I just want to go back home now. This place is too stark, too desolate, for me.” (She did not mention that, though she had no actual memories of anything beyond the first instant of her previous ‘death’ and this very close call, her imagination kept offering to provide realistic recollections. The contemplation of both attacks and the mutilations they had caused to her body lurked at the edge of her thoughts, threatening to take centre-stage as soon as she let herself relax.)

  Beckie, standing nearby and listening to this transmission, picked up on this and wished she had learnt from her ‘tutor’, Kirrina, how to soothe her stepmother’s mind.

  Kirrina discerned this concern in turn and assured the youth that she would deal with this state of affairs as soon as she had an opportunity, but as she knew that the situation back on Earth could conceivably require urgency, she decided reluctantly to postpone that act of compassion, at least until more news was obtained from the Earth-based GAF personnel. Kirrina looked at Kevin, thinking how much he needed the Medic and proposing to send him back to Earth with the good Doctor.

  “We’ll stay here and take a good look over this ship and the base,” Richard announced, in tune with his wife as ever. “Kevin, why don’t you go back with the crew of Patrol Craft Eight? And I think – Dan – that you and your crew should go and check up on Patrol Craft Nine and make sure its orbit is good. Try to figure out what parts will be needed to fix her and make a plan to get her back to New Leeds to complete the work once the Drive can be made functional. Of course, once you get out of the Moon’s ‘shadow’, you’ll be able to get an update on the situation back on Earth. I feel confident that all will be well there – the Narlav ground troops should have been defeated long ago, with the aid of Patrol Craft Thirteen – but if the GAF defence forces still need some help, two Patrol Craft should be more than enough.” Somehow the lack of any massed reserves of troops at the Mecuba base had convinced him that the enemy forces must have been smaller than the worst case scenario they had prepared for. The exact numbers of those present in the multiple Warrnam duelling in the heartless vacuum between the Earth and the Moon had of course become irrelevant to the tactical factors of the space battle, as all these troops had been eliminated simultaneously with the Negatruction destruction of these vessels.

  “There’s one thing I’d like you to do for me, first, if you can,” Commander Steele started speaking hesitantly, his voice still hoarse from his encounter with the double-thumbed Narlav hands.

  Kirrina caught his thought easily, but waited for him to continue.

  “My ship, Earth DEfender Mark One, was piloted by a very good friend of mine, Harold Morton.” Kevin paused, swallowing awkwardly, then saw that the young couple were listening patiently. “Incredibly, he survived the wreck of our little craft and set out on foot across the lunar wilderness to signal to Earth. I don’t think he can have made it, or you would have known about the Narlavs and their base here, much earlier than you in fact did. All I’d like to do is to try and find his body, and take it back to Earth, for his wife…”

  “Tracy?” Kirrina sent softly, as she communicated her directions to Beckie, recalling at the same time the message that Eric and Amber had reported after they had been rescued from the snow and ice and realising that this proved that it was the intrepid pilot who had made it to the rim and set up his laser signalling device successfully.

  “Standing by.”

  “You can find the wreck quite easily, I think, with the Short Range scanner… just look for a large metal deposit. Then you should be able to follow his tracks.”

  Tracy agreed and soon the ‘wild man’ was transferred to Patrol Craft Eight by the simple expedient of bringing that ship down until it almost touched the Narlav derelict – a task easily achieved by Brad – and having Beckie transfer over to collect him.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Commander,” Doctor Hawk announced with a smile when she met Kevin as he ‘arrived’ in their Assembly Room. He looks like Robinson Crusoe! “But I know what I know: you really need a Medic.”

  “But I thought you were the doctor?” He responded hoarsely, looking confusedly from the lovely young physician to the pre-teenaged girl who had so magically moved him fr
om the Narlav ship to the Arshonnan one, simply by holding his hand as he walked towards the outer airlock door.

  Tracy explained about the wondrous ‘Medic’, as, unbeknownst to him, Brad moved Patrol Craft Eight away from Crater Tsiolkovsky and Dan had Poko, his pilot, move Patrol Craft Sixteen on a tangential course away from the Moon’s surface – intending to regain radio contact with New Leeds as quickly as possible.

  Commander Steele nodded, his head still spinning from the battle, the revelations both preceding and following it, and the strange experience of transferring from the Warrnam to the Patrol Craft. He ran his hands down the rags that barely covered his body, accidentally knocking another fragment loose. The slight blush that followed this was lost under the layers of grime and shaggy hair.

  “Restore!” Doctor Hawk watched with professional interest and concern as the Medic did its work.

  Steele felt his aching muscles expand and the blur to his vision and his thought processes vanished away, to be replaced with startling clarity. He found he was standing several inches taller and realised that his incarceration had caused a premature curvature to his spine. He grinned as he realised two incredible truths: one, that this Medic was essentially instantaneous, and two, that he had never felt so good before in his entire life!

  “Just walk through that wall there and you’ll find a pool for cleaning up. If you jump in, those old clothes – or what’s left of them! – will disappear, and you’ll be clean before you realise what’s happening!” She waited as the suddenly straightened figure moved forwards to take her advice, albeit a little hesitantly, until Beckie gingerly took his hand and led him away. At the requisite moment, the two shimmered through the end wall… and almost instantly Beckie returned.

  “It wasn’t necessary to do the restoration without fixing the clothes,” Tracy said to her daughter. “But I think it will help him to have made the process two-stepped. It will give him time to come to grips with it all, as he floats in the pool.”

  “Oh, Mom. What a poor man!” Beckie made a face, relieved that she had completed her task without broadcasting her unease at his appearance. The two returned to the Control Room and found Pilot Hawk, husband and father, bringing the Patrol Craft to a halt, just over a hundred metres above some tangled wreckage.

  “This is it, Mom!” Beckie exclaimed, a little unnecessarily. “What a mess! How on earth did he survive the crash?”

  Tracy shrugged, impressed by the knowledge that death had been – briefly – postponed for the Canadian pilot. At least he lived long enough to send his message.

  “It is incredible.” Brad agreed, a sly grin appearing on his face. “Of course, perhaps the fact that we’re on the Moon has something to do with it!”

  “Ha!” The young girl looked at him, and threw a piece of ‘Steele rag’ at him, a frayed fragment which fluttered just past his face. “It was just a figure of speech!”

  “This is Dan.” A message from Patrol Craft Sixteen burst forth from the Control room speakers, interrupting the family faux fracas. “I wanted to confirm that we have contacted New Leeds. In turn, they told us that the battle there is over and that the Narlavs have been completely defeated.”

  Brad whooped as this news came through, and Tracy and Beckie danced around the Control Room, with the young girl being the chief motivator of this movement – both by her enthusiastic actions and by the ‘mood’ she was now broadcasting. Suddenly interrupting this, Beckie dashed away, shimmering through the ‘exit’.

  “What was that?” Brad asked, thrown off by the unpredictable departure of their self-elected ‘celebration coordinator’.

  “Oh… I get it!” Tracy began. “Steele’s pool experience has been effective. We’ll be seeing our Naval hero in a moment, I bet.”

  “Ah! No one can keep secrets with that daughter of ours around.” Brad shook his head, the explanation ‘clicking’ in his mind.

  Soon Kevin Steele and Beckie walked in, he resplendent now in his Navy uniform, automatically recreated by the Pool room as it monitored his wishes to be restored in his dress to match the image he had of his body, she still wearing her standard jeans and fuzzy sweater, but looking suddenly proud to be next to their newest refugee. On arrival, Beckie returned to her gleeful dancing, dragging her adopted parents back into the action.

  Steele looked at the celebration and shook his head as he watched Beckie’s impromptu moves and inevitably found Beckie’s high-spirited emanations coursing through his consciousness.

  “Thanks, Beckie,” he began, grinning widely. “Your message was timely and your guidance appreciated.” This was a reference both to a mental newsflash he had received from her as he was climbing out of the pool and to her appearance, just after he had been equipped with his recreated uniform, as the thought occurred to him that he had no idea how to leave that invigorating Pool Room. He looked at the screen, observing the remains of his wonderful ‘star-sub’ from this new, top-down perspective. The passage of time had dulled his recollections of the destruction begun by the Narlav’s laser-slicing attack and continued, after a heart-in-the-throat chase through the lunar mountains, by a further laser strike and the resultant impact of their relatively fragile vessel on the rugged lunar rocks. He recalled that the destruction had been aggravated by the pull-apart strength of the displaced Gravity Inducers and found that he was becoming amazed for a second time at the survival of his pilot friend. Just goes to prove he really was one of the best ‘jet jockeys’ there has ever been!

  The Hawks realised that another chair was needed, and Beckie, with youthful expertise, called one up, and then she gestured for the latest, unofficial addition to their crew to make himself comfortable, inadvertently sending a mental message to confirm the idea, her mental self-control largely forgotten in the excitement of the battles and revelations so recently experienced.

  “There’s some footprints,” Steele indicated, as he took in the view displayed across the front of the Control Room. “They’ll still be crisp and clear, even though it’s been nearly… five months since we were intercepted.” Again, his head inclined slightly towards Beckie, for confirming this detail. And it seems like a bad dream now…

  Brad lowered the Patrol Craft closer to the diminutive marks and Beckie used the scanner to zoom in on the image, which quickly resolved into boot prints, many of which were like plaster castings of the treads – every detail of the grooves and serrations crystal clear as they were viewed through the vacuum of space. Hawk then flew along Harold’s route, becoming amazed at the increasingly long distances between the boot prints – points of contact with the Moon’s surface – and correspondingly impressed by the tenacity and skill of the Canadian pilot who had tried so hard to warn his colleagues back on Earth.

  Soon, the magnificent sight of planet Earth distracted them all as it rose above the almost colourless mountains. Hawk found that he had overshot the trail of footprints, mesmerised as he was by the wondrous blue-white globe, but a little back-tracking was all that was required.

  Beckie detected the slight electronic ‘noise’ associated with a modulated laser beam power source and tuned into the signal, converting the Morse code message into English on the display she had conjured up. In a moment she was reading the words aloud for her companions:

  “… controllers with multiple warrnam and construction probable weapon of mass destruction edem 1 hit by laser report by captain morton commander steele at lunar range between far side and near side … attention nuit extreme danger due to arrival in crater tsiolkovsky of controllers with multiple warrnam …” She ceased repeating as she recognised the cyclic nature of the message.

  “Oh!” Tracy murmured. “Eric’s report was correct! And the message is still going out, long after he set it up …”

  Steele sat a little taller in his chair, his eyes glistening, but said nothing, for there, nestled in a small recess and displayed in total clarity as Brad ‘homed-in’ on the precise location, was the NASA space-suited figure, his helmeted h
ead just centimetres below the rim, and the tripod-mounted laser standing nearby. Sunlight glared off the rocky protuberances and a vague glow illuminated the hollow slightly, raising its temperature quite significantly above the otherwise frighteningly low values found in the eternal shadows.

  “I’ll suit up and … no, I think we’ll just use the Hoist.” Brad changed his mind as he thought about his total lack of practice with ‘Moon walks’ except for his earlier, very bouncy, thankfully brief ‘trip’ from Patrol Craft Eight to the stranded Warrnam. “That will be both safer and quicker.”

  Beckie summoned up the Hoist, and, moments later, the frigid figure had been transferred to the Patrol Craft’s Assembly Room, where Tracy and Kevin hurried to find the fallen fighter, laid out sideways on the unyielding floor in his modified Extravehicular Mobility Unit.

  Steele crouched down by the stock-still suit and sobbed, his emotions raw and his emotional balance still askew after months of solitary confinement.

  The young doctor knelt beside him and waited respectfully for the U.S .Naval officer to regain his composure.

  Kevin at length raised his head and checked the suit gauges. “There’s still some power. Just a trace, really.” He reached for the space-suited left arm and, moving it gingerly, showed how it was still flexible. “I thought he’d be frozen solid, but that recess he settled in was partially illuminated.”

  “The visor is still down.” Tracy sounded tense. “Can you raise it?”

  Steele looked at her, concerned. “It might not be pretty – decay, etc., you know.”

  “Yes, I’ve experienced it before, more times than you could guess.” She thought of the partly frozen bodies she had tried and failed to ‘Restore’ in those first few days after the cold began. “But there’s just a… Just let me see!”

  Beckie got up from her post in the Control Room, determining to see the legendary pilot’s body as she picked up on her mother’s increasing interest in this long-lost corpse and beginning a short-range but remote focus, with her unique powers, on the scene.